Hua Mingzhu, who was laid off from a struggling state-owned feed
plant three years ago, made a comeback earlier this month as the
owner of the plant.
Hua became the owner of the small feed plant, that lost money,
located in Wuxi, a scenic city in Jiangsu Province, east China,
after she won the bid for ownership of the plant at an auction
organized by the local government on July 12.
She beat other bidders with her bid price of four million yuan
(US$480,000).
According to government regulations, Hua, as owner of Wuxi Compound
Feed Plant, has to pay the salary and social welfare contributions
to 46 laid-off workers in addition to the 48 employees she
currently employs.
“I’m going to hire more salespersons and several young people with
a college education, and reform the income distribution system so
that employees will be better paid for better work,” she said.
Hua used to be in charge of public relations work, worked as a
saleswoman for the plant, and was laid off in 1997, along with many
others, due to the poor performance of the plant.
Hua later started her own company and worked as a real estate
agent. “The business has been quite profitable,” she said.
China has loosened control over the management of medium-sized and
small state-owned enterprises (SOE) that are losing money, allowing
overseas and domestic investment into most of those firms.
(China Daily 07/21/2001)